1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, and a method and a memory medium therefor, and more particularly to an information processing apparatus adapted to recognize handwritten information such as a handwritten character and to generate a character symbol as the result of recognition, and a method and a memory medium therefor.
2. Related Background Art
The conventional character recognition apparatus is composed of handwritten pattern registration means for effecting feature extraction based on normalized handwritten data from which the information on the size and position of the character is lost, a user registered dictionary registering character codes corresponding to feature data, extracted by the handwritten pattern registration means, without the size and position information of the character, and recognition means utilizing the user registration dictionary.
In such conventional apparatus, however, the information on the size and position of the handwriting at the character registration is lost at the registering operation, so that the user registered dictionary does not contain such information on the size or position of the character. Therefore, the information on the size and the position is not available at the recognition process. Consequently, if the user registers handwritings with different positions or sizes and effects the subsequent input operation in consideration of such different positions or sizes, such handwritings are considered same in the recognition process and cannot be mutually distinguished.
In order to resolve the above-mentioned drawback of the prior art, the present invention is to utilize a dictionary which stores the feature amount of the handwriting information, the size information of the handwriting information and the character symbol to be outputted, in mutual correspondence, to detect the information on the feature amount and size of the entered handwriting information and to search and output a character symbol utilizing thus detected information and the above-mentioned dictionary.
The above-explained configuration provides an advantage of releasing character symbols corresponding to handwritings that are almost same but different in size, and realizing, for example in case of character recognition, handwritten character recognition easy to use for the user.
Preferably there is also provided means for registering, in the above-mentioned dictionary, the feature amount based on the handwriting information, the size information of the handwriting information and the character symbol to be outputted, in mutual correspondence. It is thus rendered possible for the user to register his own handwriting and the character symbol to be outputted.
Also the above-mentioned dictionary preferably contains also the position information of the handwriting information, and can be searched by the feature amount, size and position of the entered handwriting information to obtain the corresponding character symbol to be outputted. In this manner it is rendered possible to assign plural output character symbols to a substantially same handwriting.
The above-mentioned size of the handwriting information is preferably represented by the area ratio of a circumscribed rectangle of the handwritten pattern to the entire area of a predetermined input frame in which the handwriting is to be entered. In this manner the size of the entered handwriting can be evaluated objectively, and there can be obtained an output correctly reflecting the intention of the user.